Brought to you by Scott P. Rogers, Funkhouser Real Estate Group, 540-578-0102, scott@HarrisonburgHousingToday.com
Brought to you by Scott P. Rogers, Funkhouser Real Estate Group, 540-578-0102, scott@HarrisonburgHousingToday.com
Friday, February 12, 2021
Several of my clients have recently commented on how our local real estate market seems out of balance - with so many more active buyers in the market than there are sellers willing to sell their homes.
This dynamic often leads to many buyers making offers on well priced, well prepared, well marketed listings to hit the market in and around Harrisonburg.
Sometimes it even leads to buyers offering above (or waaaay above) the list price for homes that they don't want to let slip away.
So -- if the market is imbalanced, with sellers having the upper hand, what could help our local market come back into more of a balance?
In some ways, it's hard to imagine how we work ourselves out of this imbalance, but here are a few real, imagined or fantastical thoughts...
- If buyers all took a stand and refused to keep paying more and more for houses and went on strike - this could cause the market - oh, never mind. This one is not very realistic. There are so many buyers in the market that I don't think they're all just going to decide to stop buying.
- If mortgage interest rates significantly increased, this could affect how many buyers were willing and able to buy, which could cool down the market.
- If a large new home community launches, that could quickly increase the supply of housing, helping to balance the market. There are several possibly in the works, but it's difficult at this time to gauge how quickly those will come to pass, what will be built, at what price point, etc.
- If each of the local retirement communities magically create 300 new spaces for the oldest generation to move into, this would likely free up quite a bit of resale inventory, which would help create some market balance.
- If major local employers departed or downsized, that could cause sellers to sell who wouldn't have otherwise, and could cause buyers to not buy who would have otherwise. Thankfully, however, we seem to be seeing stable and increased local employment so this change doesn't seem likely.
In the end, there don't seem to be many certain paths forward that would allow for our local housing market to balance out in any significant way. As such, it seems relatively likely that our local housing market will remain strong and at an imbalance that heavily favors sellers.
If you're seeing something I'm not - and have predictions for how our local market might balance itself out in the coming year - let me know!
